Ryan Coogler’s supernatural flick Sinners is generating buzz nationwide for its chilling plot and eerie atmosphere. But beyond the scares, the film weaves in some unexpected threads of American history.
Set in 1930s Mississippi Delta, near the region where Coogler’s own family lived before relocating to California, Sinners delves into the haunting legacy of the era, according to the award-winning director’s recent interview with The Guardian. While the supernatural elements take center stage, the story subtly explores the harsh realities of life during the Jim Crow South—touching on the aftershocks of slavery, the struggles of Reconstruction, the trauma of the First World War, and the crushing weight of rural poverty.
What makes Sinners especially compelling is its portrayal of how African Americans, Chinese Americans, and many communities of color were forced to navigate—and sometimes survive—systems built on exclusion and racism.
“I’ve been struggling to tell a story that does the great migration for a while,” Coogler told The Guardian during an interview published April 17. “It’s a personal obsession of mine, this period of time when Black people were considering leaving the south en masse.”
The Coolie Trade.
As NPR notes, Chinese migrants faced harsh conditions alongside Black Americans in the aftermath of slavery. In the mid-1800s, shortly after Emancipation, Chinese laborers were brought to the United States as part of the so-called “Coolie trade”—a system of indentured servitude that was often coercive and exploitative. While the trade period is more often associated with the Caribbean or South America today, this brutal form of labor was alive and well in the U.S., particularly in the South and West.
In the West, the Central Pacific Railroad Company signed Chinese workers to five-year contracts, assigning them to backbreaking jobs, from laying tracks for the transcontinental railroad to enduring extreme conditions in agriculture. Thousands were sent to the Mississippi Delta, where cotton planters recruited them to replace freed Black laborers during Reconstruction.
Source: ‘Sinners’ Shines History On Chinese Immigrants Living In Mississippi
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